PLENTY ON YOUR PL8
When

school­teacher Pa­tri­cia Ar­mao de­cided to start her own health and beauty mar­ket­ing busi­ness with hus­band Daniel, a nu­clear medicine sci­en­tist, she knew it could prove tough go­ing.

So she de­cided to keep her­self mo­ti­vated with a per­son­alised num­ber­plate that would urge her to aim high: DRMBIG. “Ev­ery time I saw it, it re­minded me to think out­side the square and to push harder for what I wanted,” Ar­mao, 34, says. “It’s also a great con­ver­sa­tion-starter and pro­vides an en­tree to talk­ing about our busi­ness.”

It’s an in­creas­ingly pop­u­lar tac­tic in cor­po­rate life. About 30 per cent of cus­tomers of the com­pany MyPlates are busi­ness peo­ple – from sole traders to multi­na­tion­als – who use per­son­alised plates to pro­mote their com­pa­nies.

“We’re get­ting much more used to short­ened words and cryp­tic mes­sages through Twit­ter, and so more and more peo­ple are com­ing on board,” he says. “Busi­nesses see it as a way of dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing them­selves from com­peti­tors, and if it’s also funny, then it makes their name all the more mem­o­rable.”